Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, held a press conference on 14 June 2022 at Bute House, her official residence at Charlotte Square in Edinburgh. In a renewed bid for Scottish independence, she introduced the first of a series of white papers laying out the rationale for, and the means of achieving, Scotland’s freedom outside the UK. The first white paper, entitled “Independence in the modern world. Wealthier, happier, and fairer: why not Scotland?” sets out the economic rationale for Scottish independence. According to the paper, Scotland’s continued membership of the UK cannot be justified on economic and social grounds, especially in the aftermath of the devastation caused by the Covid pandemic. To be more precise, the UK has fared unfavourably, when judged against ten “comparator countries” in Europe, in terms of GDP per capita, wealth gap, income inequality, poverty rates, childhood and pensioner poverty, gender pay gap, innovation and productivity in the economy, gross expenditure on research and development, and business investment.
The Scottish government is seeking a second independence referendum (IndyRef 2) in October 2023. The first independence referendum, on 18 September 2014, was decided in favour of staying within the Union, with only 45 per cent voting for independence. This referendum was made possible by a Section 30 Order in Council, passed by the House of Commons, giving the Scots the green light to voice their opinions. Under the Scotland Act 1998, the Scottish Parliament cannot pass legislation that “relates to reserved matters”. The UK and Scottish governments disagree, however, whether an independence referendum can be considered a reserved matter, and as such a referendum could possibly go ahead even if the UK government refuses to consider another Section 30 Order. Calls for a second independence referendum have become louder since only 38 per cent of Scots voted in favour of Brexit during the EU membership referendum of 23 June 2016, demonstrating that a majority of Scots do not wish to be “taken out of the EU against our will”. The SNP had abandoned its Eurosceptic position to one favouring “Scotland in Europe” as far back as the 1980s. In March 2021, on the grounds that the 2014 referendum was decisive and therefore does not need to be repeated, the UK government denied a request by the SNP for a second referendum in 2020. The second referendum was part of its manifesto for the 2019 UK general election, when the party won 48 of 59 Scottish seats in the House of Commons.
The Anglo-Scottish parliamentary union dates back to 1707. Earlier attempts to unite the countries, in 1606, 1667, and 1689, had failed even though England and Scotland had shared a Stuart monarch since 1603 under the Union of the Crowns, when James VI of Scotland acceded to the English throne as James I. The 1707 union resulted from the two nation’s economic, political, and religious concerns. An economically insecure Scotland sought to free up trade and harmonise taxes with its southern neighbour, England felt the need to be protected from French territorial ambitions, while both parties hoped to ensure Protestant Hanoverian Succession to the throne after the death of Queen Anne, instead of the competing Catholic Jacobite Stuart line. The overriding importance of religion made the United Kingdom of Great Britain conditional on Scotland retaining the historic rights of its church (Kirk) and Presbyterian system of church government.
The Scottish Parliament voted itself out of existence on 16 January 1707, by 110 votes to 67, at the Second Reading of the Act of Union. Royal Assent followed on 6 March and the Union became effective on 1 May 1707, on which day there was a grand ceremonial service at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Reports suggest that the Union was received more rapturously south of the border than it was in Scotland. The first Parliament of Great Britain met at Westminster on 23 October, 1707 with 16 elected Scottish peers and 45 nominated Scottish commoner MPs, a disproportionately low number given the size of English representation at the time. The Scottish Parliament did not meet again until 12 May 1999, having last sat on 25 March 1707.
Scotland’s history after the Union can be described as one of mixed fortunes, with the more ardent of nationalists describing it as a period of English economic and political domination and suppression of Scottish national identity. Many Scots left their homeland Some were forced out by the Highland Clearances of crofters and emigrated to America and the British Dominions (Canada, Australia), while larger numbers of Lowlanders voluntarily escaped poverty and a lack of opportunity to seek employment in England and the wider British Empire. The Scottish diaspora frequently clung to their customs, traditions language, and music in their new homes, even when sheltering under the umbrella of Britishness. The Empire benefitted from Scottish explorers, settlers, administrators, traders, plantation owners, bankers, military personnel, professionals, missionaries, scholars, and many others. The philosophical, economic, and scientific ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century raised Scotland’s international stature. The Industrial Revolution, which saw the growth of coal production and the development of manufacturing (linen, cotton, jute, chemicals, iron and steel, shipbuilding, etc), made Scotland an economic powerhouse. All the while, Anglo-Scottish family ties grew stronger, establishing emotional bonds between people either side of the border.
Modern Scottish nationalism can be traced back to tentative beginnings in the early 1900s. The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) was founded in April 1934 through the merger of the centre-left National Party of Scotland (founded in 1928) and the centre-right Scottish Party (founded in 1932). It remained on the fringes of Scottish politics until the late 1960s, since when it has metamorphosed into a centre-left entity, become the largest political party in Scotland and the third largest party in the House of Commons. On 2 November 1967, Winifred Ewing won the previously safe Labour seat of Hamilton at a by-election, only to lose in 1970. The discovery of North Sea oil in Scottish waters in 1969 fuelled a resurgence of nationalism, in the belief that this new resource could harnessed to drive economic growth in Scotland. While the oil industry was still taking off, a series of economic crises during the 1970s and the beginnings of deindustrialisation led to growing disaffection within Scotland, as voters abandoned their traditional Labour and Conservative loyalties in favour of the nationalists. The SNP, campaigning for ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’, even gained eleven seats at Westminster in the October 1974 UK general election. Support for the SNP subsequently waned during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Under the modernising leadership of Alex Salmond, a reinvented SNP performed well in the 2007 and 2011 Scottish Parliament elections, becoming the majority party in Scotland from 2011 onwards.
In the 1970s, the idea of Scottish autonomy within the UK gained support, involving the devolution of power to a Scottish assembly in Edinburgh, although the SNP itself remained committed to full independence. In any case, a referendum on Scotland’s constitutional status in March 1979, seeking a devolved Scottish parliament, was unsuccessful. Scots had to wait until a second referendum in September 1997, which led to passage of the Scotland Act 1998 and the first elections to a new Scottish Parliament in May 1999.
Scottish nationalism is being framed as the desire for self-determination, guided by ‘social democratic’ policies aiming for inclusivity and social and economic justice, rather than by an ethno-nationalist ideology that emphasizes national identity. Scottish distinctiveness by itself is not new and predates calls for independence, as evidenced by the long-standing separate educational, legal, and taxation systems in Scotland. More recently, Scots have benefited from free childcare for young children, free school meals for children in the first three years at school, free university education for local students, and free home care for the elderly-all unavailable in England.
If a second Scottish independence referendum were to go ahead and the vote did favour independence, interesting times lie ahead. Decoupling Scotland from the UK poses many challenges, including those to its currency, financial services, businesses, and national defence, to list a few. For example, the SNP Sustainable Growth Commission recommended in May 2018 that an independent Scotland would continue to use Pound Sterling for a “possibly extended” transition period, leaving its monetary policy in the hands of the Bank of England. A fiscal deficit is likely to compromise Scotland’s public-sector expenditure, as it loses UK government subsidies, and may lead to cuts in its various social welfare commitments. Scotland may choose to rejoin the EU under Article 49 of the Treaty of the European Union, subject to accession negotiations and the consent of all 27 EU member states. This, in turn, might lead to an UK-Scottish trade border, which matters as around 60 per cent of all Scottish exports in 2019 were to the rest of the UK. It may well be that Scottish independence, if it were to happen, would illustrate once again that often there’s no gain without pain.
Ashis Banerjee